“How could you even come back after all that?!” Choi aboji glowered at him. Taemin shrank back, but he wouldn’t go away. He was here for a reason and he had to fufil it before he so much as thought about giving up. Even harsh reprimands were bearable if he just got to do what he'd come here to do.

“We trusted you, and this is what came of it?! How could you do this to us?? How could you be so heartless??”

The tutor tried to soothe the furious parents with some form of explanation, something to calm them down at least momentarily so he could rush into the house and into Minho’s room. He held his hands out, waving them in an attempt to pacifiy them. All he wanted was to talk to the boy, all he wanted was to make him feel better. All he aimed to do was speak his mind, all he wanted was to see his face again and tell him not to cry for a bastard like him. But they weren’t giving him the chance to put in even a single word edgeways.

“Do you have any idea how hurt the boy is?!” Choi aboji yelled over the tutor's babble. Taemin fell silent at that. “He hasn’t come out of his room, he hasn’t eaten anything. He doesn't open the door, and he doesn't even talk to his aunt. He won’t listen to us, and he keeps crying about how…” the elder's voice broke. “… about how he’s stupid.” The elder man hid his eyes behind his hand and quivered with sadness, his wife holding his arm all the while. “Is this the nonsense you were feeding him all those days?! Is this the kind of person you've been to him all this time?!” he asked loudly.

“Please let me talk to him once,” Taemin beseeched. “Please. I swear, I never wanted this to happen. Please don't push me out, let me speak with him. I can get him to come out. Please, just once. Let me talk to him. Please!!”

“Leave, Lee ssi. It’s best for all of us if you just leave…” Choi eomoni sniffed into her handkerchief. “You’ve… you’ve done enough for us. Now leave my boy in peace.”

“Please… Eomoni... A-aboji... Please…” Taemin fell to their feet. “I’m begging you. Please let me at least just talk to him. I won’t do anything, I promise. Let me talk to him, please!”

The Chois shook their heads and began closing the door on his face, began snatching his opportunity right out of his grip. He'd implored on his knees, holding his hands up to them as if praying on their stoop, but they'd turned him away. The man grit his teeth against his thick hopelessness, and suddenly burst in between them, pushing them aside unceremoniously and running to that door he’d walked through a million times before. He ignored their shouts and banged his fists on the white paint of the door.

“Minho ssi, please, listen to me. Are you listening?? Please, answer me. Minho ssi??” he demanded over and over. He thumped harder and harder, fraught with panic. “Listen to me, tell me if you’re listening to me, Min—”

The lock of the door shifted a little, as if the boy inside was making sure it was in place. Taemin breathed out shakily, looking at the shiny knob with anxiety, blinking his rapidly misting eyes. He turned his eyes back to the glazing of the door and patted it with more warmth than his earlier pounding, running the pads of his fingers almost affectionately on the oil varnish. As if he were holding his student and not a plane of cold blank wood.

“Minho yah…” he started, calling him with the affectionate term for the first time, breaching the barrier of teacher and student for the first time. “L-listen to me... I am sorry,” he said with explicit guiltiness, voice cracking heavily. “I am… I’m dying because of what happened. I’m dying because I couldn’t help it, because I couldn’t be better for you. I... I’m the worst. I know it; you don’t have to tell me. I don't need this door between us to tell me you're upset. I know, and I'm—I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry.” There was no vocal response from the boy. The tutor wilted, crept to the floor, his hands dragging over the wood, his body weeping too hard to even breathe in between. He shuddered and sniffed, miserably kneeling there on the carpet of the Choi family’s living room.

Minho’s father grabbed his shoulder, intending to pull him away, but Taemin shoved him off angrily. He slammed his fist on the door one more time and heard Minho gasp on the other side, shocked. The wood jarred, the doorknob rattling from the force.

“But I would never take it back,” he snarled. “I taught you with all the honesty in my blood. I supported you with every bone in my body. I dedicated every nerve, every fiber in my brain to you, to helping you. I fought the world for you with my own pathetic hands and my own pathetic words. I cared for you when I don’t care about anything else in my stupid, empty life. Because you deserved it, Minho yah! You deserve the world to worship you, to honor what you are and what you think. And I gave you my everything so you would realize that. Don’t tell me I failed, now! Don’t tell me it was all for nothing!”

Choi eomoni began to dial for the cops. The tutor gnashed his teeth in frustration and scrunched his eyes shut with pain, scratching at the white paint of the door, wiping his shameful wet cheeks with his rough sweater.

“I’m sorry I’m so bad, Minho yah. I’m sorry about being so useless in this world, and that I mean nothing to them. I’m sorry I lost you. I’m sorry I couldn’t be everything you wanted me to be,” he groaned, and then looked up at the door as if he could see through it; see Minho crouching there, in front of him. “But I’m not sorry for being your teacher. I’m not sorry I knew you, and you knew me. I’m not sorry we ever met. I’m not sorry about any of it. And you shouldn’t be sorry, either, because everything I told you was true. Everything I said about you was real. You can’t let this bring you down, don’t let this hurt you. I’m not worth it. You hear me, Minho yah? Don’t fall, now. I'm not worth it.”

He heard no acknowledgement for his pitiful oration, there was no sign telling him if he was even being heard at all. The threads holding Taemin’s heart tightened considerably and threatened to cut the silly, derisory muscle into a million worthless pieces. He sobbed, feeling utterly lost as the police sirens sounded outside the house. He didn’t even have the strength to get up, much less bang on the door again as he wept uselessly. The two policemen began dragging him away like he was nothing but a sheet of paper, and his whole body gave up, then, not even thinking of resistance.

But nothing damaged him worse than Minho’s low voice, facelessly grating at him from within his room.

“Liar.”

Eonsook bailed him out.

Kibum had been away at his parents' place and he wasn't even picking up his phone. She was the only one he could turn to in his desperation. She rushed in late in the middle of the night speaking to the officer on duty, looking harassed in her night clothes, he hair sticking in odd ways. 

It would have been shameful, but Taemin had no more feelings inside him. He had died in the Choi household. There was no Lee Taemin in existance anymore, a pale and empty specter sat in the overnight cell meant for him. There was no Lee Taemin in this world anymore, he’d evaporated with the utterance of one simple little word. He could do nothing but float with his weightless, emotionless body as the police officer processed his bail and let him off with a stern warning of 'don't be seen near that house again'

“Taemin ssi, please talk to me, are you alright?” the girl asked him, once they were safe in her car. She’d put a blanket around him as if he were a victim struck with a tragic accident. She rubbed his arm, swept his hair back, tried to have him talk to her, looking at him with her kind eyes. He hadn’t earned it. It irked him, it prickled his chest with culpability. His soul became an iron weight inside him. His existence didn’t justify such benevolence. He swayed deadly in his seat.

“Taemin ssi…” she tried again.

“Kill me,” he murmured and she drew away in momentary horror, but her hand came back almost instantly, consoling him again. “Kill me... Throw me out on this street and leave me to rot. Stab me with all your hate, Eonsook ah. Please... just kill me,” he shook out, his eyes welling. “I don’t need to live anymore.”

“Please don’t say that, Taemin ssi. Please don’t mean it…”

He gripped his hair with his hands, wanting to tear it out. “How could I do that?! How can I live this down?! After what happened to that poor boy... How… what am I made of?!” he hit his chest repeatedly with a clenched fist, thrashing his ribcage and questioning his body on its humanness. “How could I be so cold?!”

Eonsook stopped his violent self-deprecation, grabbing his fists firmly despite how frightened she looked. “Please stop! Please stop hurting yourself!”

He moaned out loud, collapsing into her arms like a child, and he cried for hours. He cried and she held him, not minding the least bit. He broke apart and sizzled in the deepest, lowest pit of shame and she picked him back up , put him together. But she cried with him, too. Because Lee Taemin was already dead, and all they could do now is mourn.

He had brown eyes. They were the color of autumn, benign and compassionate to look into. They held the warm, not-yet-cold wind of the season. Clear as diamonds but still murky as clay, they were twin orbs pulsating with life, as if they'd always been like that, all-seeing and all-knowing. 

At least, that’s what they seemed like in the poster. 

Professor Choi Minho, PhD. Philosophy, was delivering a lecture at the COEX auditorium tonight. The fliers and notices were up everywhere near the university grounds, no flat and vertical surface had survived. Wherever one turned, people were abuzz with the subject, because it seemed the man was a genius. He wasn’t one of those old bores with long flowing white beards who spoke in a mind-numbing drone, or displayed odd habits of eccentricity. In fact the girls thought he was really young and handsome for someone who held a doctorate degree. The public was milling around at ticket counters, some asking if there was any concept of backstage passes, hoping to hold lengthier converstations with the professor.

Taemin chuckled at all this with the wisdom of someone who'd already lived their lives: knowing someone great, standing next to them and being heard... He had already done that many years ago. And it was something of a feat for him, really. It was something that made him feel immense self-pride. He patted his jacket pocket, feeling reassured about his own ticket. He ran his hand through his slightly graying hair, thinking about the past. It was a good activity, because the lengthy train ride to Sanseong from his home in Moran gave him all the time in the world to think.

Kibum had turned the offer down, saying he had to take the misus shopping.

“You sure it’s not shopping for you? Let me talk to Eonsookie,” Taemin had teased on the phone.

Kibum ground his teeth and pushed the phone to his wife, who had been chuckling in the background, the clapping of her hands easily audible over the speaker phone “Taeminnie, I’m sorry we can’t make it,” she apologized sweetly. “I hope you don’t mind…”

“Of course not,” he said to her, pursing his lips. He did mind but he wasn't going to insist on being babied over this. "It's alright, Sookie yah. We'll meet up sometime later. You guys aren't too far away in the new house, now, right?" he allowed, good-naturedly.

“You’ll be fine, right?” she still pressed, concern clear in her tone.

He hesitated before he scoffed. “Woman, don’t belittle me. I’ll be alright. Don’t worry, OK? Enjoy your shopping. Run that man's credit card empty for me, will you?" he joked as a distraction.

“Be careful, Tae,” she still warned in her sweet voice. “Don’t get hurt, OK? Promise me this.”

He laughed for show and promised her, ridiculing her mothering, even when he himself was scared-- Taemin was very scared. So much so, that his hand shook a lot when he scanned his token at the station. He had to hide is palms deep in his coat pockets, balling them up and clenching them as if it would help. 

Walking into the giant hall, Taemin couldn’t have felt more minuscule than he already did. Where in the light of daytime the steel-and-glass façade of the building had looked welcoming, at night it was simply imtimidating. Tonight there were students and spectators of all ages present, holding their program cards and acting grown-up, having grown-up conversations amongst themselves. He felt underdressed, out-of-place and incongruous to the whole setting. Once he found his seat, he wanted to turn around and bolt.

But Minho’s eyes were staring at him, looking through him and burning him inside out. The larger-than-life poster advertizing the event as of were some grand magic show, fluttered from artificial ventilation of the air con and Taemin shuddered. Those eyes looked through him, judged him for all his worth, tried him for all his sins against them. This had been a terrible idea. He shouldn’t  have come here. He’d made a big mistake.

“Ladies and gents, please be seated, our honorable speaker has arrived and the program will start shortly.”

An old couple looked at him, blocked form their destination and asking with raised eyebrows if he was going to his seat any time soon. He slightly bowed to them in apology and began to move into the row of seats, shuffling sideways. There was no turning back now...The lights started to dim and people hushed each other as the compere of the show brought up her introduction.

From his cheap and faraway place he couldn’t see much, and Minho was simply a well-dressed dot moving around on a large background, a slide changer in one hand and a microphone in the other. He looked taller, and his hair was neater, clipped shorter. He was more confident with his stance, he stood up straighter, his shoulders looked broader, stronger. No longer was he the boy who felt safe only in his usual chair, munching on honey-flavored buscuits and cringing over bitter coffee. No longer was he a scared child. But his voice was the same, his thoughts were the same, his words were the same. That little lisp in his deep rumble was the same. The soothing timber of his laugh was the same. His style of walking was the same, too, despite the cane not being needed anymore.

Taemin was instantly reminded of a worm tearing out of it's limiting cocoon, bursting apart with all the colors in the world and fluttering away like a grand and fierce butterfly.

He closed his eyes and only listened for the forty-five minute presentation on a subject he didn’t know and a topic he didn’t understand. The audience was captivated, occasionally rolling with chuckles at some joke. Taemin understood the feeling, they were in the lecturer's palm. But he didn't even have to be coaxed like that, he had always been in Minho's cage of words, clawing at the wires, pushing against restraints, yet so very content to be a prisoner. The explanations weren't too difficult, the concepts were far from befuddling, but the man only wished to hear that rich tone speak of great things, of notions too large and thoughts too deep for any normal human mind to have perceived. Because there Minho stood, speaking as calmly as if discussing the best recipe for Kimchi.

When he was done, people stood up and applauded, giving him a tribute and roaring at his great theories and opinions. Taemin remained in his seat, smiling and feeling so small, feeling so very insignificant, yet bursting over with pride. His body filled with warmth, he swaim in when it pooled out of his heart, filling up his life. His eyes watered a little and he wiped them with the sleeve of his coat, sniffling and clapping his comparatively negligible appreciation among what sounded like the applause of the rest of the world.

He hadn't initially intended to, because of his anxiety, but Taemin stayed back till the crowd thinned, watching the organizers congratulate Minho on his wonderful lecture. He watched the boy, too… maybe it was better to call him a man, now. He watched the other’s back as he moved along the length of the low table, picking up his papers and gathering his things. He watched carefully because when Minho smiled at the praise from others his smile was the same as that one day like no other day: in the garden, when they ate their little strawberries.

Taemin blinked to keep the moisture from returning in his gaze, the nostalgia was too overpowering He slowly, timidly walked up to the stage, taking out the box he’d brought specially for this occasion, from his pocket. He took a deep breath and walked forward, one step at a time, clearing his throat when he was close enough.

Minho turned around and looked at him, blinking without any recognition, but seeing-- really seeing nonetheless. He smiled cordially after a bit. “Annyeonghaseyo. Did you enjoy the talk, ajussi?”

Taemin smiled back sadly and nodded. He walked further, feeling more and more dazed with his pride the closer he got to the tall man. “I have a question, though,” he said. The other jolted a little on hearing a voice from his past, turning to stare at him. Minho's eyes burned a little when they settled on his face, unblinking, steady, arrow-like. He waited with bated breath for the other to finish his statement.

“Is there anything between life and death?”

Taemin shakily held his hand out. In it sat a plastic package of deep red, fresh and juicy strawberries.

Minho stared at the present for the longest time, looking like a child again, looking uncertain again. But Taemin didn't bloat with the urge to comfort, he didn't flood with his protective instincts like he used to, all those years ago. He couldn't feel all that because he was scared again, chest whirring with anticipation, mind curling with fear of animosity, fingers sweating with nervousness. His palm shivered, but he still held it out, breath pacing through his lungs like horses in a race.

At last, the professor smiled, accepting the box gratefully. “No, Taemin ssi” he said, shaking his head. “There is nothing there but us.”

Done~

I hope it's decent enough for a read, hah.

Thank you, all of you, for your support and for reading my humble work. You guys are the best. I may not win but I'm sure as hell happy I got to write something so different from my usual stuff. Thank you for this opportunity to try something new.

As always, comments will be loved.

~IQ